A short YouTube clip (Phil Risher) offering a simple estimation method for contractors: estimate how many hours a job will take, convert that to a dollar rate covering labor, basic materials, overhead and profit, then round up into fixed time-price blocks (e.g., up to a four-hour block; anything over four hours rounds to an eight-hour block) to simplify pricing.
I use a very simple process for estimating. Basically, you look at a job and you just determine how long is this job going to take me to do. If he looks at a job and he goes, okay, I think I could finish this job in three hours, then I have a dollar rate. That number would cover the labor, basic materials on the job, and the overhead and profit. What I also do is I don't let them go by. Okay, I think it's going to take three hours. They have to bump everything up. So it's either up to the four hour block or anything over four hours gets bumped up to the eight hour block and that makes it very simple to estimate.
